


Foot Notes

by stereokem



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Fatherly Feelings, Gen, Missing Scene, Not Underage, POV Buffy Summers, POV Rupert Giles, Slice of Life, Some not-so-fatherly feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28617369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereokem/pseuds/stereokem
Summary: And, then, she surprises him.And she does it again. And again.--Drabbles from the perspective of the Watcher and the Slayer. Rating might go up.
Relationships: Rupert Giles & Buffy Summers, Rupert Giles/Buffy Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Short drabbles from the alternating perspectives of Buffy and Giles on their relationship as it develops through the series. Each drabble is 500 words or less. More or less a writing exercise for myself. I've also just been re-watching BTVS. I was a Giles fan before, but DAMN do it hit different now. I also find myself appreciating Buffy more (and, weirdly, Cordelia, though she isn't spotlit here).

**Juvenile**

He’s seen a teenage girl before. Christ, he’d been living with a whole group of them prior to relocating to Sunnydale, CA. Junior Watcher. Never before assigned his own ward, but directed by the Council to help train a collection of Potentials they had rounded up in Scotland. They had all been well-behaved. Understanding of their place. Accepting of their fate. Dutiful. So much more dutiful than he had been at their age.

He’s only forty when he moves to Sunnydale. He doesn’t feel that old.

At least, not until he meets her.

Ms. Buffy Summers is completely beyond his experience. The kind of prototypical teenager that he had only ever seen in movies or from afar, but never up close: blonde, petite, pretty, as if she had just strayed off the cover of a magazine. She is bubbly, rebellious, and disinterested. His first impression of her is that she is entirely unsuited to slaying, that the gods had made some cruel joke in making _her_ the Slayer. That she is entirely too young, too undisciplined, too juvenile to possibly be up to the task.

And, then, she surprises him.

And she does it again. And again.

**~_~_~**

**Tweed**

Tweed was in at one point—in, like, the _very_ distant past.

She thinks of this as she takes in the curious librarian—the Watcher. She looks at him in his grey suit, with his dorky glasses and earnest expression as he slaps the tome _Vampyr_ in front of her. She thinks that he looks just as stuffy and just as British as the Councilman who introduced her to her birthright. Maybe even more so. This man looks like he has lived his whole life in a library. Like he wouldn’t know what fun was if it bit him on the ass. 

She wants nothing to do with him—nothing to do with _it._ She’s done with slaying and with doing what men in suits tell her. She just wants to graduate high school. To fall in with the popular crowd. To go to movies and talk about boys and obsess over the latest trends in makeup. To cram for tests and go dancing with her friends. She wants to be normal. She does _not_ want to be involved with someone like _him._

But, then, he surprises her.

And he does it again. And again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Defenestration**

He is, if nothing else, a well-learned Watcher. His insatiable interest in collecting knowledge (and, later, his penchant for dark magics) has prompted him to read anything and everything he can find on the supernatural. He collects books and manuscripts the way other collect stamps or baseball cards. It is, in some ways, _obsessive._ He, who is imbued with no special powers, becomes instead a caretaker of knowledge. So, when it comes to the tomes and texts of the Watcher’s Council, he is nothing is not well-read. He even knows most of the Slayer Handbook by heart. And all of this in an effort to prepare himself to be a Watcher, to guide and train a Potential or even the Slayer herself.

He determines early on that the Slayer Handbook will be of no use when it comes to Buffy Summers.

She is the least bookish being he has ever met, besides a Faryl demon. Getting her to concentrate on anything besides physical training for more than three minutes is a gargantuan effort. Even more than that: she’s too _clever_ to want to be book smart _._

She has the kind of quick wit that leaves him dizzy and resorting to slow, dry sarcasm. She has the strategical and tactical skill of a much more experienced fighter, able to weasel her way out of impressive scrapes. She constantly flouts the rules—and is, on the whole, a better Slayer for it.

In time, he decides to throw the entire rulebook out the window.

(He may complain from time-to-time, but he does not truly miss it.)

~_~_~

**Watcher**

It’s a lame job title, she thinks as she lands another roundhouse on Giles’ padded torso. _Watcher._ Might as well just call them _Slayer Voyeurs._

Watching is a spectator sport. What they are doing right now—training her combat skills in the library—does not leave her guardian on the sidelines. Less than a match though he is for her enhanced physical abilities, he does his best to try and put her through her paces. When it becomes clear that any real attempts at sparring will end with him on the floor, he backs off, instead walks her through a series of movements—and then proceeds to critique each one.

“What do you mean ‘sloppy’?” she finds herself asking. “That move took you out two minutes ago.”

Giles stands off to the side in his rumpled shirtsleeves, looking somewhat less stuffy sans jacket and with his hair mussed up. His lips press together in that way that means he is either trying not to grin or trying not to grimace (Buffy hasn’t figured out how to tell them apart yet). “Be that as it may, you are not executing your strikes with the most finesse.” He adjusts his glasses and picks up the boxing strike pads, holding one in each hand. He then walks over so that he’s standing straight in front of her, raising the pads to chest level. He gives her a firm but steady look. “Try again.”

She assumes a fighting stance. Breathes in. Strikes.

“Still sloppy,” Giles says mildly, shaking his head and his hands at the same time, wincing. He holds the strike pads slightly aloft again. “Focus on the middle of the target. Think about the precision.”

They go again. And again. Giles coaxes her through it, his sharp eyes taking in every shift of her feet, every tensing of muscle.

“Try again, but slowly. Breathe through the movement.”

They go several rounds like this, with him coaching her, correcting her, asking her to do it again, but slowly, precisely. She focuses on her own breathing and the shift of his eyes as she adjusts her stance, the set of her shoulders. The intensity of his scrutiny does not phase her; in fact, it is almost comforting. Grounding.

“Again, but now faster.”

It's at times like this that she experiences moments of clarity. Moments where she is not a teenage girl, not a high school student, not a daughter or a sister or a friend. In these moments, she is the Slayer. And training her is the most important thing in the world to Giles. He was made for this purpose, much as she was made to slay demons. In these moments, it's just the two of them, honing her skills, preparing her for the battles outside. 

“Again.”

She strikes again, once with her left hand and then with her right, straight into the middle of the targets.

“That’s it.”

His voice is warm now, even pleased. He smiles at her. She notices how his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Good.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Discipline**

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he finds it difficult to discipline her.

Buffy is . . . an astonishingly slippery fish that way. He supposes it begins with her flippancy: everything, including the looming forces of darkness that threaten to take over the world, can be construed as a joke her in vernacular. He finds himself constantly chastising her with: “Buffy, we should take this seriously . . .” He reminds her time and time again that Slaying is her duty, her destiny. He maintains that, while school is important, Slaying must come first. That boys and clubs and hanging out with her friends must, by necessity, pale in comparison to her true calling.

Buffy’s response to these admonishments are varied. Sometimes, she rolls her eyes, muttering, “yeah, yeah, big destiny” under her breath. Other times, she comes back with a witty quip. Once or twice, she makes puppy dog eyes at him that really shouldn’t work (but they do).

A few times, she shouts. Rages.

It hurts him more than it should to see her in such anguish. To hear her say: “I don’t _want_ this.” He knows a little of what it’s like to be forced into an inescapable destiny; but the burden he bears as Watcher is nothing compared to hers as the Slayer.

She is so incredibly young—all of sixteen. She shouldn’t _have_ to contend with any of this. It should not be her cross to bear.

If Giles could, he would take that burden from her. He never expected to feel that way about his charge—it was not, after all, part of his duty to develop any . . . fatherly attachments. But they begin bloom without his consent: he feels protective of her. There are times when he wants to shield her from the world and its atrocities; but he knows that this, too, is not within the bounds of duty. He can only train her, can only guide her and hope that she does not die too soon. The secret to this goal, the Watcher’s Council has told him, is discipline.

Giles realizes, after some time, that all of his “attempts to discipline” her have no teeth. They are all pathetic entreaties over which he has no power: _Please be careful. Please don’t die._ So, perhaps it’s not that _she_ is difficult to discipline but rather that he himself has very little— at least, where she is concerned.

He understands that his failure is a disservice to them both. He understands that it might be putting them all in danger. 

But, then again, Buffy comes to the rescue; and she does this by obeying him.

Not his every word or direction, but she does yield to his authority, his experience and wisdom. She does as she is told, even while she complains.

Giles is no fool; he realizes that Buffy does not obey him because of any power he possesses.

She does it because she respects him. And that will do.

**~_~_~**

**I Feel a Thing**

Giles may be utterly blind to it at first, but Buffy knows pre-romance bickering when she sees it. She knows right away that there is something cooking between him and Ms. Calendar.

For one, they fight _way_ too often to have any real animosity between them. It’s the kind of squabbling that has no teeth, that is just serving as an excuse to spend more time around each other. The kind of arguments that are meant to convince not the other person, but the individual who is delivering them that there is absolutely nothing to be attracted to. She sees the way Giles looks after Ms. Calendar if they’ve just had an argument in the hallway, his expression soft as he watches her retreat. Buffy’s not stupid; she _knows_ there is something going on between them.

She also knows that the computer science teacher is, in a word, attractive. Buffy’s not so juvenile that she can’t see that Ms. Calendar has a kind of dark, sharp beauty about her. Mysterious, even. (Xander has waxed lyrical about it more than once.) And the woman’s frightfully intelligent—something that even Giles could not miss. Something that would, no doubt, be a _turn on_ for Giles.

More than all of that, she is fully a _woman._ She’s still young, yeah, probably in her thirties, but definitely not a girl. Once the charade of faux disagreements is over and they get down to the real flirting, this becomes patently obvious. Ms. Calendar teases Giles expertly, slyly, as if she could take him apart piece-by-piece knowing that he would enjoy it. She teases him like she has the experience to do so.

It’s incredibly weird to think of Giles— dorky, weapons-toting librarian to the stars— dating. Having a love life. (To be perfectly honest, Buffy deliberately tries _not_ to contemplate the love lives of the adults she knows because . . . _ick_.) But, she supposes the man is only human under all the tweed. She can, admittedly, see why a woman would want to spend time with Giles: he’s gentle and intelligent, which is a lot more than she can say for 99.9% of her high school compatriots. And, of all the faculty and staff at Sunnydale High, Ms. Calendar could do a lot worse than the school librarian. 

Buffy doesn’t quite know how she feels about the flush she sees on Giles’ cheeks when Ms. Calendar is in the room. She decides to be happy for him—and to help him, in whatever little way she can.

“Remember, Giles: ‘I feel a thing, you feel a thing . . .’ but personalize it.”


End file.
